This blog is written by author-activist David H. Albert, his daughter Princeton University graduate student Aliyah Shanti, and friends. Begun in the wake of the December 2004 tsunami and their work in south India in response, it chronicles visits to the offices of Land for the Tillers Freedom (LAFTI) in Kuthur, Tamil Nadu, and the work of Gandhian land-reform and ecological activists Krishnammal and S. Jagannathan. Please visit the Friends of LAFTI Foundation site at www.friendsoflafti.org

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Englishing...and a Short Note from Amma

I just managed to get some bath soap, which is lucky, since I finished off the last bit of the bar I had been using. A few days ago, I asked one of the cooks for a bar, and she sent Bharvi, one of the LAFTI workers, off for laundry powder, which wasn’t at all what I wanted, since bar laundry soap works much better for washing clothes by hand.

This entry, however, is not about soap. It’s about writing, and the LAFTI style of it. Those of my readers who are in contact with LAFTI (and I often wonder how many of you are) will know exactly what I mean. Long, meandering sentences, articles and plurals left out, and word choices that are often quite charming, if sometimes bizarre.

It’s definitely Indian English, but more than that, it’s Krishnammal’s English. She is the only person working here, with the slight exception of Gandhi, who acts as her scribe, with enough command of that language to write in it, and it shows. Except for scribal errors, the LAFTI writing style is almost exactly the same as Krishnammal’s spoken language. This explains some of the confusion and repetition in the writing. Amma often has to say something several times in different ways to get the whole point across, and she always works much better in a dialogue than just speaking by herself. She also makes mental leaps from one thought to another that leave anyone else in the dust.

I have become the vengeful angel of proper grammar. I’ve been taking letters, notes, descriptions of projects, budgets, and anything else written in my native tongue, and running them through the mill of proof-reading. (I’d edit Tamil, too, but I don’t even know the 200-something-letter syllabic alphabet. A few days ago, Gandhi said “Here, Aliyah, edit this,” and handed me five pages of a Tamil description of the self-help housing program. Krishnammal had just been lecturing him on his Tamil grammar, or maybe word choice. I’ve gotten to the point of knowing enough of the language that I can sometimes tell what people are talking about, but not what they’re saying.) When I’m finished, the pages are full of black-and-blue pen-created bruises, and when they heal they are perfect American English, except for the spellings, which I allow to remain British.

A good example might be the “Short Note about LAFTI,” which I think may have been published on this blog previously. Below is the original of one paragraph:

“There are 49% of landless people. Most of the lands belong to temples and absentee landlords. Because of old feudal system there was constant struggle between landowners and landless. The result 44 women and children were burnt alive in the year 1968 on Christmas day.”

This is the only mention of the beginning of LAFTI’s work. Nowhere in the note, except for the signature, is Krishnammal mentioned, which is quite usual in her writing. Nowhere is the area in which LAFTI works spelled out, although the phrase “this area” is used in the first paragraph. After my edits, the above paragraph reads as follows:

“49 percent of the people in this mainly agricultural, rice-growing area have no land. Most of the lands belong to temples and absentee landlords. As a result of the old feudal system, under which one landlord held the land and others worked it for him, there was a constant struggle between the landowners and the landless workers. In a tragic episode of this struggle, 44 women and children were burnt alive in the year 1968 on Christmas day, in the village of Kilvenmani.”

The rest of my changes are of much the same sort. The grammar is perfect, the words are correct, but I wonder if I haven’t done something wrong in so drastically changing the style. Obviously, clearing up the pieces of history and details that were skipped over can only be an improvement, but there is none of the original wording left, and I had been really very fond of it.

If Krishnammal were to send me a letter with every punctuation mark in the correct place, every verb agreeing with its subject; if her recipe for sambar had everything measured out to the last lentil or drumstick; I would find it very odd and indeed disturbing. She likes my changes, saying that I am able to write what she tries to express (these are not her words) but I am less sure about them. I would like to find a balance between clarity and LAFTI style, and I will continue to work towards this.

And now I’m helping Krishnammal with her Italian.

Aliyah

A Short Note about LAFTI

LAFTI (Land for the Tillers Freedom) is a registered organization. It was incorporated in 1981, although its founders have been working for the last 35 years in the Nagapattinam, Tiruvarur, and Thanjavur districts of Tamil Nadu with the mission of distributing land to the landless poor, most of whom are dalits (untouchables).

49 percent of the people in this mainly agricultural, rice-growing area have no land. Most of the lands belong to temples and absentee landlords. As a result of the old feudal system, under which one landlord held the land and others worked it for him, there was a constant struggle between the landowners and the landless workers. In a tragic episode of this struggle, 44 women and children were burnt alive in the year 1968 on Christmas day, in the village of Kilvenmani.

Beginning in 1968, Gandhian workers, including LAFTI’s founders, S. and Krishnammal Jagannathan, took on this unjust system of land ownership, establishing five Gandhi Peace Centres, and starting the work of distributing the land. After a long and difficult struggle including sathyagraha, fasting programmes, rallies and imprisonments, we have been able to distribute 10,000 acres of land to 10,000 landless families.

Various kinds of development works have been started. We have organized trainings in mat weaving, tailoring, computers, electrics and plumbing, carpentry, and masonry, to give employment opportunities to the young women and men.

As well as these projects, we are conducting three hostels for the education of children from poor families. Women are especially involved in our long and arduous struggle against prawn culture, as well as illicit liquor. Our cow- and goat-rearing programme and curry-powder making are progressing through the women’s self-help groups started by LAFTI. We are also conducting awareness camps, handicapped projects, kitchen gardens, and composite manure schemes in several villages.

During the floods of the winter of 2004, which destroyed crops, houses, and labour, LAFTI distributed rice, blankets and mats to flood-affected people. They did much of the same work after the tsunami on December 26th, 2004. From March 2005, LAFTI has been conducting a brick-making and house-building programme in over 20 villages. So far, they have made over 20 lakhs of bricks, using local materials, and the labour of the people who are building their own houses. LAFTI’s policy is to help the people build brick houses an entire village at a time, removing them from the squalid mud and thatch huts that flood and collapse every time it rains.

For all these years we have tirelessly worked for the betterment of the poor, and we continue to do so.

Links

Krishnammal and S. Jagannathan are the subjects of the new oral biography
The Color of Freedom by Laura Coppo, edited
by David H. Albert. All proceeds from the sale of the book through David Albert's website go to support LAFTIâs work.

The London-based Environmental Justice Foundation has a website devoted to the global deleterious
impact of prawn farming.
Through the site, you can also access their excellent report
âSmash and Grab: Conflict, Corruption, and Human Rights Abuses in the Shrimp Farming Industry."